


deathless

by pallidus



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, If Geralt can say fuck so can I, Modern Girl in Witcherland, Self Insert, Temporary Character Death, The Author Regrets Nothing, language barriers, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25190491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallidus/pseuds/pallidus
Summary: Anna did not have a Netflix account and had not binged The Witcher, unlike half her tumblr dash. It looked fun - there were a lot of gifs of Henry Cavill in a bathtub and some cutie with a lute cracking jokes - but she wasn’t in the mood for a new series right now.She was going to regret that.
Comments: 102
Kudos: 201





	1. a soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LISTEN. I am at three months on lockdown and I am losing it trying to finish my thesis, so you all get self-indulgent self-insert fic. This barely has a plot and the first bit is pretty gory. There’s cursing, vomit, blood, more cursing, and an overuse of adverbs and hyperbole. You have been warned.

She woke up on a floor, choking on blood.

Anna lurched to one side and vomited a lot of blood and bile. It was pretty gross.

There was a loud conversation happening nearby. She couldn’t understand it. Anna ignored it in favor of vomiting some more. How she had this much gross in her was a mystery. Better out than in, though.

She paused after one particularly drawn-out spasm. The conversation had turned into a fight. There wasn’t much she could do about it though. Moving out of the recovery position seemed fairly impossible and her limbs felt rubbery and too weak. The two guys arguing were going to have to wait until she felt less like a mostly-dead mouse rescued from a murderous cat.

Anna finished vomiting. She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her white dress. There was a remarkable pile of sick next to her and all she could do was roll to the other side to turn away.

She regretted that almost immediately. For one thing, her body ached ferociously. For another, she rolled directly into the body of a dead child, throat cut gaping wide. Anna could see the esophagus poking out.

She had already thrown up everything in her stomach but that didn’t stop Anna from dry heaving when she saw the glistening pink insides and the red red red front of the child’s white outfit.

Fear and horror were enough to kick start an adrenaline rush. Anna dragged herself into a seated position, away from the body. This did not help, because now she saw more tiny bodies laid out neatly in a row, all wearing white and all with their throat slit.

“Oh fuck,” she wheezed out, voice hoarse and scratchy. “Oh god in heaven.”

Her throat felt awful. She looked down at her chest. The white dress was more like a rough-spun cotton shift. It was also drenched in blood (and now vomit). She did not like where this was going, not one bit.

Anna touched her throat. There was a thick, ropy scar running under one ear to the other, tender and warm to the touch.

“Oh _fuck_ ,” she said, once more with feeling.

This had the dubious result of attracting the attention of the two men arguing. They were dressed weird and one of them had a goatee and the other had a knife. It was covered in blood.

The one with the goatee said something. It definitely wasn’t in English. It didn’t sound friendly, either.

The guy with the knife said something else. He waved the bloody knife around for emphasis.

“Fuck you too, asshole.” Anna said. She didn’t know what the nine hells was going on here, but she was getting a pretty good idea and she wanted absolutely zero part in it.

Goatee Guy said something and then stared past Anna, a look of smug satisfaction on his face.

Knife Guy looked reluctantly pleased as well, crossing his arms as he noticed whatever Goatee Guy had seen.

Anna straight up did not want to see what they were so pleased about. She really didn’t. But things were moving behind her.

She turned slightly. It was pretty fucking bad.

The bodies of all the children were... changing. Elongating jerkily, wisps of poisonous green clouds forming from the ground. Skin went from waxy to chitinous. Spines cracked. Hair and teeth fell out. One by one, every child that had laid dead on the ground slowly lurched upwards mutating in a freak show of gore and horror.

The earlier spike of adrenaline was nothing compared to the panicked reaction of her nervous system now. Anna leapt upwards to her feet and the world rolled uncomfortably like the worst alcohol poisoning ever. She staggered forward, away from the eldritch monstrosities developing around her. This had the unfortunate result of bringing her closer to Knife Guy and Goatee Guy, but they were human enough.

The things that had been children were not. There were too many legs, too many limbs.

There was something wrong with her legs, something wrong with her hands and her balance and her eyesight. Anna didn’t care. She stumbled onwards in spite of the wrongness. She could freak out later.

She had only managed to get a few feet when she pancaked across a barrier of some kind. The air in front of her was clear and free, but for whatever reason, Anna couldn’t move forward. She threw herself against it. Physics had clearly lost all meaning here. Maybe more force would help.

Goatee Guy looked even smugger, pointing at her and smirking at Knife Guy. Even with the language barrier, Anna could tell an “I told you so” when she saw it.

“Let me out,” Anna wheezed. She banged on the impossible wall with both fists. “Fucking fuck, don’t leave me in here with those things!”

Goatee Guy and Knife Guy looked super ready to leave her in there with those things.

Her hands were small and her arms were noodle-y. Anna sank to her knees, adrenaline failing. She clawed at the barrier, bruising knuckles and breaking nails on nothing at all.

The noises behind her were ominous. A susurration of clicking and tapping, bones and joints cracking and squelching into a new shape, a new form.

Was it better to face death head-on? She really wasn’t sure. Anna looked down.

There was something on the floor. A line, painted on the stone in black. She looked at the monsters beyond the barrier. They were watching with great interest.

She spat at them. Her spittle hit the barrier and gravity did the rest. And then, the black line... lessened. The line was not solid, but some kind of ink. Her spit had diluted it somehow, contaminating the line. Anna prodded the barrier again; it was weaker now. This was insane fairytale logic but she was trapped in some kind of barrier circle with mutating monstrosities after having been ritually sacrificed. Fuck it. Either this was some kind of horrific coma nightmare or some real weird shit was going down. In any case, it was time to think out of the box. Barrier. Whatever.

Goatee Guy narrowed his eyes, suspicious. He shouted something at her. It was angry.

Anna gave him an ugly smile and spat again, directly on to the line. The ink thinned more. She reached down and rubbed at it with the bottom of her shift frantically, wiping away as much of the ink as possible.

And then, with an audible crack, the circle broke and she fell forward onto her hands and knees. Anna could see the tiniest, thinnest break in the ink. It was enough.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Goatee Guy moving forward. He was in front of Knife Guy. This turned out to be a very bad decision, as Knife Guy sighed and oh so delicately reached forward and slit the other man’s throat in one smooth motion. Judging by the spray and immediate deluge of blood, he’d hit at least one artery.

Goatee Guy choked, staggered forward, and collapsed to the floor dead.

Her day had been really bad thus far, which was one hell of an understatement. Anna couldn’t muster up an emotional reaction to watching a man get murdered in front of her beyond a general, exhausted, “fuck”.

Knife Guy then stabbed Goatee Guy in the back. Literally. Unmindful of the blood spatter, he carved through the rib cage to literally dig out his companion’s heart. And then he literally crushed it under a boot heel.

Anna was never going to be able to use those metaphors ever again.

The noises behind her had stopped. She did not want to look around. She did anyways. She had to know.

Anna regretted it immediately.

The transformation had more or less finished. It was like someone had mashed together a crab, a spider, and a praying mantis and then decided to add slime for extra yucks. The smallest one was probably nine feet tall and many feet wide, razor sharp looking edges on its chitinous appendages. There were way too many eyes glittering in the firelight.

Her head was woozy and she was pretty sure standing was going to be an issue, god forbid walking, but _she did not want to be here anymore_. If she had to crawl out of hell, she did not fucking care. Anna forced her limbs to move, away from the evil before her and behind her and also in the direction of a door, hopefully.

She didn’t get far before Knife Guy caught up with her. He easily hauled her upright and said something chiding. Anna was Not Thinking about how easy it was for him to do so.

He prodded her chin up with the knife, gently slicing the skin as he took a closer look at what was normally a mortal wound. Knife Guy said something consideringly. She’d heard enough of his language now to guess vaguely Eastern European, maybe Slavic. There were a lot of consonants involved and none of them sounded familiar.

Thanks to decades of American pop cultural dominance, most people could recognize English though. Could probably recognize English curse words.

“Fuck you, you goat-fucking son of a bitch,” she cursed.

Knife Guy tsked at her, then looked over her shoulder.

She heard the tapping of many, long-legged abominations and started laughing. The hysteria had kicked in. “I hope they fucking eat your face slowly. Get fucked by a rusty chainsaw, you fucking shitbag.”

Anna was not surprised in the least when the fucker slit her throat. Again. She did her best to spit blood on his face but the world was graying out and she

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anna is having a bad day. Don’t worry, it gets worse!
> 
> I like to think that after years of reading sci-fi/fantasy and so much fanfic, I would be relatively genre-savvy if I ever managed to trip my way into a portal fantasy. This is probably not true.


	2. hidden in a needle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What followed was like a montage from that time loop film where Tom Cruise died over and over and over in increasingly hilarious and gruesome ways.
> 
> It was a lot less funnier when it was happening to her.
> 
> Also, she felt worse every time she woke up. There was no food and no water and nothing but endless dark hallways and the chittering of infernal hellbeasts.
> 
> This was hell. Anna was in hell. She didn’t even believe in hell and yet, here she was, dying in endless darkness and tormented by creatures straight out of a 12th-century monk’s ergot-inspired nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Contains less gore than last chapter, more gonzo horror-movie deaths. Basically, this fic honors the fact that I am the worst at video games and die all the time. Still a lot of cursing.

The thing about being trapped in a never-ending nightmare was that the fear didn’t go away. Anna was locked in some kind of tower with a dozen eldritch abominations and no way out and she spent most of her time in a constant state of panic.

This was clearly some sort of hell dimension.

She’d woken up from what was probably her second murder and third death in a pool of her own blood. It had gone cold and slightly tacky and Anna felt even worse than before. There was a few bits of a corpse around her, which probably had belonged to Knife Guy. He had clearly been set upon by the crab-mantis-things. She was vaguely happy about it.

Anna took his knife. It was sharp and good for all kinds of murdery, stabby tasks. The room was empty of mutated spider-crabs. For now. She might need to shank a magical crustacean at some point and it was better to be prepared.

In the quiet, Anna took stock. She was covered in blood, gore, and vomit. Her limbs were... smaller than expected, soft and pale. Her boobs were gone, along with any hint of an ass. Anna took a moment to think about what that meant, running her tongue across her front teeth. That chip in her front incisor from a bike crash in middle school wasn’t there.

Either she had regressed to a point in her early childhood or she was full-on bodysnatching some poor dead child.

Her throat ached. Poking gently, she found two ropy scars strung across her neck. The skin there was tender and hot.

God she hoped she didn’t have an infection. You know, beyond the initial death-defying healing factor like some bottom-shelf Wolverine copycat. Ah well. There was no use crying over scar tissue.

Anna looked around the room. It was pretty fucking gross. There was a lot of viscera and blood and nothing remotely useful, but it was also the only room she knew didn’t have a giant spider-crab in it, so. Time for a closer look.

... on second thought, something was up. The floor was wooden, but the walls were roughly-hewn stone mortared together and covered with whitewash. The place was lit by torches, which could have been some kind of bullshit magical ambiance thing, but there weren’t any sockets in the walls or light fixtures. And the room was cool, they way they built buildings before air conditioning.

This building was old.

There wasn’t enough of Knife Guy left to take a look at, but the spider-crabs had left Goatee Guy alone. Obviously, they preferred fresh meat. (They had left her alone.) Anna bent over for a closer look. The fucker’s clothes were fancy shit that were now covered in blood, but it certainly wasn’t a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt. Not a single stitch was modern dress. In fact, Anna was willing to bet that everything he was wearing was handmade, even the boots.

She really didn’t like where this train of thought was going. Time to throw a steel girder onto the tracks.

“All right, Bilbo, what have you gots in your pockets?” Speaking aloud was a mistake. Her throat really wasn’t up to the task after two consecutive knifings. She coughed, wanted to cry, and stuck her courage to the sticking place.

Looting a corpse was a new and unwelcome experience.

Goatee Guy was really legit about his medieval clothes; no pockets at all. What he really had was a bag that tied at the waist. And in that bag was an honest-to-god waterskin. It was made out of leather. There was also a small round of hard cheese, wrapped in a linen napkin, and some biscuits that looked like hockey pucks. Goatee Guy was carrying a small leather-bound book tucked into his jacket. And, of course, a fist-sized coin purse with coins of gold and silver.

Anna sat back on her heels and very much did not think too hard about a murderous cosplay wizard who was so into renfaires that he smelted his own fantasy currency. Instead, she did her best to tie the bag of useful things to her own waist and try to figure out how she was going to carry a knife around all the time without accidentally stabbing herself. There was probably a learning curve in holding live steel.

The corpse continued to be stiff as a board. Rigor mortis was a thing; it hadn’t been that long since Goatee Guy shuffled off this mortal coil.

She wasn’t really sure about the protocol for disposing of dead bodies that you had just robbed after they performed dark sacraments and almost likely had tried to kill you. Was kicking a corpse considered bad luck? He was already dead, his luck couldn’t get much worse.

Somewhere deep in the recesses of Anna’s brain, a small quiet voice went, “ah, there’s the hysteria.”

It was probably too much to ask the universe for a break. Instead, she went and closed the wooden door and braced against it and had a very overdue breakdown.

***

  
Some time later, after the tears and shaking had subsided, Anna got to try drinking out of a leather bag for the first time. It went about as well as everything else had, which is to say poorly. At least it was just water on her face.

Ah. She was still covered in blood. Gross. Mopping at her skin with the linen napkin was an exercise in failure as well, on account of how much goddamn blood there was. Anna probably looked like an escapee from a gory zombie movie who had then been captured by cultists and thrown into a bathtub full of blood. And now she’d ruined her one handkerchief.

Oh well. The cheese was salty and surprisingly good. The biscuits were obviously some form of rock masquerading as food, but they gave after she gnawed at it for a while. She only ate one and tucked the others back into the satchel. Anna hadn’t noticed during her breakdown, but the room was getting dimmer. There weren’t any external windows. It was the torch lights; they were running out of fuel.

Anna wasn’t particularly scared of the dark. She was willing to make an exception for being stuck in a place where ten-foot-tall crab monsters with spider eyes were wandering around and she was apparently all of four years old again.

Getting up and examining the problem revealed another pressing issue: she was fucking tiny. The torches were well out of reach. Even if she found more fuel to burn, the things were probably well past her tiny wingspan. This was clearly a problem Anna could solve with a little bit of Girl Scout know-how. Irritatingly, she’d never been a scout. She’d done ten years of soccer and could, if pressed, kick a ball in the general direction she was aiming at. Not exactly a useful, transferable skill.

There was a table against one side of the room. It was made out of solid wood and weighed roughly a thousand pounds. There was no way she’d be able to push it over to one of the torches before they sputtered out and died.

Giving up was for quitters, but Anna felt the long desperation of the day press upon her. Surely, things would look better after a nap? She curled up underneath the table and prayed with a quiet exhaustion that her luck would turn.

***

Things did not look better after the nap.

To start, everything hurt. Whatever magic was keeping her here and alive was certainly no match for the sheer uncomfortableness of sleeping on a stone floor. Anna was cold, despite curling up to conserve heat. Her tiny body ached and itched and she would stab someone for a bath.

Plus, more importantly, the fucking torches had finally burnt out. She was alone, in a room with one and a quarter corpses, in the dark.

Oh, and Anna could heart tap-tap-tapping at the door. You know, just in case she forgot the whole bloodthirsty monster thing.

Anna stood up. Or rather, she tried to and immediately clanged her head on the underside of the wooden table because she was an idiot and forgot she was hiding from monsters like the five-year-old she apparently was. In her defense, it was genuinely pitch black.

Maybe it was time to take a lot of calming breaths. The 4-7-8 method was good for that. It wasn’t magic (which was maybe a thing here, wherever here was), but it certainly lowered her heart rate.

Helpfully, this took long enough that she couldn’t hear anything moving outside the room anymore. It was important to celebrate the little victories.

Anna crawled out from underneath the table. Empty darkness loomed in front of her, cold and unrelenting. She closed her eyes. It was almost an improvement. This way, Anna could pretend she was running blind by choice.

So, at this point, she had two bad options: stay in the creepy room and enjoy the great smells of slow decomposition, or run the gauntlet outside and maybe get eaten by giant monsters or maybe run away fast enough to find freedom. This was no fun and she did not want to do this, but apparently, her life was an HP Lovecraft nightmare now.

Anna tripped her way to the door. She hadn’t really fixed its position in her mental map of the room or anything, so it took longer than expected. The door was made of rough planks and it swung open quietly. Rusty hinges would have been a little too horror movie cliche.

The hallway beyond was just as fucking dark. Great.

Left, right, or straight? Anna stood there in the dark, trying to pull a Gandalf in the Mines of Moria. Unfortunately, all she smelled was the grossness that was herself. Time for random chance. She turned left, one hand on the wall and the other flung outwards to prevent herself from walking into anything.

Anna shuffled along carefully. The floor was uneven stone here and she was barefoot. The air around her wasn’t particularly fresh, but she couldn’t feel any drafts. For all she knew, she could be in a hallway, in a ballroom, or in a giant spider-crab nest. Anna was really hoping for hallway.

The wall curved slightly to the right and she followed the gentle curve until she tripped over something. The stone floors hurt; she’d definitely scraped her knees and palms bloody. Anna felt at the thing on the floor. The texture was strange, like some kind of shell covered in tiny, fuzzy hairs. And was that a joint of some kind? The whole thing tapered down into a razor-sharp point.

It... was definitely a spider crab. Well, part of a spider crab. A spider crab leg.

“Oh shit, where’s the rest of it?”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Fuck.

She turned wildly, not that it did her any good. The attack came from above and she had a moment of brief, wild fear before the pain hit and something fucking crunched her ribs into a dozen tiny pieces.

***

She woke, chest aching. Anna took back all of her previous complaints. This was agony. She panted, every breath jarring her tender, recently healed rib cage. Oh fuck that hurt.

Anna gingerly patted at her front. The cotton shift was mauled, but the skin underneath it was in one bumpy piece. She was hyper aware of every single rib in her chest. It was unpleasant.

There wasn’t much to do but lay prone on the floor. If breathing hurt, standing up and exploring in the dark was going to have to wait.

Time passed. Her breathing evened out eventually.

Anna felt at her waist. Somehow the satchel and the knife had stayed put. Great. Good. She cautiously dug out the waterskin. There was still a bit of water left and her mouth understandably felt like death. The whole operation was a bit tricky, but she managed it with a bit more success this time. The stale, weird tasting water was the best thing she’d ever drunk.

Time had no real meaning anymore as she just laid out on the floor and tried not to jar her ribs. Anna strained her ears. If Daredevil could do it, so could she. Daredevil had superpowers, though. She had hyperactive scar tissue and real bad luck. If Anna kept getting mauled, she was going to end up looking like Deadpool, minus the Ryan Reynolds physique.

Eventually, though, she thought she could stand. She did. She moved forward, slowly. It was all she could do. Her ears were ringing in the silence, her heart pounding. Anna breathed slowly, trying to stay as quiet as possible.

She lasted longer, this time, creeping along at a snail’s pace. When her skin goosebumped, Anna dropped any sense of stealth and booked it.

***

“Let the record show that running does not work,” Anna choked out. She’d taken another pincer to the midsection. It hurt.

Anna couldn’t tell if the fuckers were getting a square meal out of her before she revived. She hoped not. Prometheus had it lucky. All the eagles tore out was his liver! And at a predetermined time!

The silence and the dark was getting to her.

Eating seemed like a supremely bad idea - her guts had just been repaired - but she was so hungry. The biscuit was deeply unappetizing. Anna wolfed it down anyways. Healing was hard work, apparently. Her stomach gurgled and clenched and she was so hungry and there was only one biscuit left that she should save for later. It took a supreme force of will, but she put the last biscuit away.

Eventually, Anna stood up and continued onwards. It might have been backwards. Dying horribly was an excellent excuse for getting your headings muddled. But what else could she do? Even laying there and waiting for death was pointless; she’d just wake up later with even more injuries.

She heard the tap tap tap of a spider crab coming. Anna froze. Maybe they operated like a t-rex. The tapping came closer and closer and she could hear the limbs move, could hear the joints click.

Anna had no idea how big the hallway (room?) was. Unfortunately, the spider crab bowled right into her... and kept going. She was knocked to the floor, but it didn’t seem to pay any mind, thank all the listening gods.

It seemed like a good idea to lay there on the ground until the spider crab had scuttled out of hearing.

She closed her eyes and did her best to not think.

She opened her eyes and, as was the new usual, everything hurt. No novel injuries, thankfully. Anna laid there and listened. Silence.

She moved forward, gentle, whisper-silent steps on the stone flooring. Anna eventually found herself in the entrance to a huge, cavernous room that was - miracle of miracles - not completely pitch black. A lantern remained lit with some kind of eldritch ball of flame, casting light weakly across the room.

Given her luck, Anna was completely unsurprised to see a small spider crab staggering in uneven circles, clicking furiously and trying to escape the larger spider crab trying to eat it. A few legs had been crunched already, leaving the thing dangerously unstable. It was almost funny, except for the part where she was definitely going to try and sneak past just to grab the lantern.

The littler crab thing managed to stab the bigger one. It was a bad idea; too close and the bigger one managed to disembowel the littler one. The screech was genuinely upsetting.

Anna watched from the shadows at the big one proceeded to feast on its vanquished brethren. Some animals practiced cannibalism upon others of their species and so did evil mutant spider crabs, apparently. It looked gory and not at all like a visit to a delicious seafood restaurant.

The thing was clearly distracted. Anna didn’t want to move, but she also wanted to get out of the doorway.

She moved.

The spider crab looked up. Its eyes gleamed in the low light.

“Fuck,” Anna said.

***

What followed was like a montage from that time loop film where Tom Cruise died over and over and over in increasingly hilarious and gruesome ways.

It was a lot less funnier when it was happening to her.

Also, she felt worse every time she woke up. There was no food and no water and nothing but endless dark hallways and the chittering of infernal hellbeasts.

This was hell. Anna was in hell. She didn’t even believe in hell and yet, here she was, dying in endless darkness and tormented by creatures straight out of a 12th-century monk’s ergot-inspired nightmares.

Anna died over and over and over and over and over again until she had explored every room and pushed at every door with her wimpy little arms and could truly find no exit.

Wandering in the dark never got easier. She did have an enjoyable time trying to stab the spider crabs, but it usually ended in her getting mauled to death and after a while, that got boring.

At a certain point, she just dragged herself onto the table with the lantern and refused to move. There was no reason to waste more energy trying to find a way out. No point trying to kill the other inhabitants of this wasteland. Anna just laid there and listened to the distant sounds of evil spider crabs slowly murdering each other in the dark.

She slept and woke up and slept and woke up and slept.

***

There was a man standing in the hallway.

Anna stared. If it was a visual hallucination, it certainly was a novel one. He was tall, brawny, and dressed like some kind of rejected Dragon Age character concept art. The red-striped leather shirt thing was particularly impressive.

“Hi?” Anna waved weakly, her voice croaking with disuse. Sure, it might be a complex delusion brought on by extreme stress and isolation, but there was no need to be rude.

He was definitely looking back at her. He said something. It wasn’t English. It sounded wary.

“You know, if my brain was making shit up, the least it could do would at least have them speak English.” Anna propped her head up on a fist, sprawled out on the table with the magic lantern. It was nominally warmer than lounging on the stone floor, which sapped any heat she managed to produce.

The new guy looked equally confused and muttered something she couldn’t quite hear. It sounded like a curse word.

Anna politely ignored how rude her hallucination was. “Hey buddy, any idea on a way out of here?”

In response, the man moved closer, hands up like he was trying to calm a skittish animal. As he came closer, Anna could make out two different swords hanging off his back. Also, he was wearing a black leather pants with a red leather cup-thing. She blinked. That... was a little weird.

The man said something, voice calm and unruffled.

Anna shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t understand.” She sat up, tired of the whole thing. Auditory hallucinations came and went in the echoing silence and visual hallucinations haunted the corners of her eyes in the constant dark. But at least those were intelligible!

The man stopped as she gingerly hopped down off the table and wandered towards him. As she got closer, she could smell sweat and leather and oil, which was definitely a new level to her psychosis.

She pointed at her own waterskin and mimed drinking. “Got any water?”

Previous interactions with delusions had usually fallen apart at this point. It was hard to fake physical objects.

The man slowly reached over and handed her his own waterskin.

It actually felt real. Oh wow, her brain was really going to town on this one. Anna was going to be really sad when this delusion fell apart. She opened the waterskin carefully and sniffed. It smelled like water in a musty leather animal bladder.

Auditory, visual, olfactory, and even physical. Goodness gracious, this was really an impressive delusion. She raised the waterskin to her lips, not actually expecting anything to happen.

Anna choked immediately as water hit her throat. Oh fuck, that was actually water. She sputtered and did her best not to cough to death in front of the first real person she’d met since getting murdered by mutant spider-crabs.

The man said something again, his eyes glinting strangely in the low light.

Anna blinked. Fuck, this dude was real.

“Okay. Okay, you’re really real.” She blinked again. In all the time she’d been in this hell dimension, she’d never actually hoped to get rescued. She took a small sip of water to hide her confusion and then another and then another. The water was so good. She could almost feel her dehydrated insides soak up every molecule.

The water-skin was empty somehow. She was still thirsty, but suddenly embarrassed about drinking all this man’s water in one go. Anna handed the water-skin back and ducked her head in apology. “Uh, thanks buddy.”

She stared at him. Up close, she could see the massive scar on his face and the spiky shoulder pads and the knife sheathed at his waist and the two swords on his back.

Anna was suddenly, vividly aware of her ragged shift and the blood splatter that was basically everywhere. She hadn’t been able to gather enough water to clean herself off. The gore was caked on, in places.

“Anna,” she said, pointing a thumb back at herself. “Anna.”

He stared a little suspiciously. “Anya,” he said.

Eh, close enough. “Anna,” she repeated, smiling and nodding and pointing at herself. Then she pointed at him.

There was a long pause where she was really considering if it was possible to dumb this conversation down further.

“Eskel,” he said, pointing back at himself. “Eskel.”

Anna genuinely smiled. Oh thank god. Communication was possible. “Eskel!” She parroted, pointing at him again and waving cheerfully. “Hi Eskel!”

Fuck, she hoped that was his name and not the word for “me” in his language. First-contact language exchange was a nightmare.

“Anya,” Eskel smiled back. It looked unpracticed.

Further communication with the locals was interrupted as Eskel tensed and whirled around, unsheathing a sword faster than her eyes could follow. There were more words she couldn’t follow, but the hand gesture definitely suggested Eskel wanted her to stay back.

Anna heard the faint sound of spider-crab legs tapping on the stone floor. Ugh, not now. She sighed heavily. Eskel looked tough, what with the bulk and the scars and the swords, but she wasn’t feeling dying again right now. Anna really didn’t want the first person she’d met in this stupid nightmare to die of evil mutant crabs, either.

There was nothing for it, then. She edged her way around Eskel, who looked like he wanted to grab her but also like he was also wary of touching her. (Fair enough. There was so much blood caked on her everything.) Anna peered into the darkness, checking all the normal ambush spots outside her room to see who it was.

The spider-crab had seven legs and a slightly wonky left pincer. It clicked menacingly at her.

“Fuck off, Bob.” She hollered, cupping a hand to her mouth to make the sound carry better. “I’m busy, come back later!”

There was a long trilling sound. Bob ran a pincer across his mandibles.

Anna grinned. Bob was such an asshole. “I said fuck off!”

If spider-crabs could grumble, this one was grumbling. It scuttled away, disappointed.

If anything, Eskel looked even more concerned in the low light. His hand went for the knife at his belt. Anna noticed almost immediately because it was closer to eye-level than anything else was these days.

“Whoa whoa, lets not get stabby,” she said, throwing up her hands, palm open and fingers spread. “I’ve been here a while, okay? You tend to get a sense for who can be bullied and who needs to be ambushed with a knife. Not that I would ambush you with a knife, but the point stands.”

Eskel did not seem convinced. Stupid language barrier.

Unfortunately, Anna did not have time to convince him because Bob had returned, with Kevin and (ugh) Donald. This was frankly alarming. Anna was alarmed. There were only seven spider crabs left and it was bad news when they ganged up on something else.

“Eskel, buddy, I think you ought to pull out that sword again!” Anna said, going for her own knife and gesturing broadly at the three asshole spider-crabs at her door.

Eskel said a word feelingly.

Anna made a note to memorize that word. It sounded like a very useful curse word.

Then, suddenly, Bob was on fire.

That was new.

She glanced side-long at Eskel. It was a bad idea to take her attention off Donald (who was a right motherfucker), but if Eskel was a firebender, Anna wanted to know.

The light was weird and flickery now that Bob was stomping around in a fiery panic. It didn’t look like firebending, though. Eskel just made a motion with his hand and then -whoosh- more fire, this time on Kevin.

Donald took the opportunity to strike at his nearest rival. No honor among spider-crabs, which was why he was twice the size as the next largest monstrosity in this nightmare. (Also, cannibalism.) Kevin’s mandibles chittered loudly as he futilely fended off the attack.

Anna made for Donald. She’d spent a very painful period of time trying to figure out where the weak spots were on a spider-crab. (Just after the thorax, there was a brief chink in the chitinous armor in the underbelly.) With enough speed and force, a good jab would fully incapacitate the back four legs. She wouldn’t even have to do anything else; the others would circle the injured party and nature would take its course.

The only downside about this particular weak spot was that she had to be in pincher-range to actually make contact. Eskel’s firebending and sword-swinging was a pretty good distraction.

She dodged in from behind, trying her best to avoid those creepy legs and stay out of the spider-crab’s line of sight.

Eskel roared something in surprise; Donald reared up, also on fire now.

Anna ignored it and made with the stabbing.

The other downside with this move was that when everything went well and she made the hit, a gusher of ichor sprayed out. And because of where she was standing, it meant she got showered in gore.

“Eww, eww, eww,” Anna chanted as she kept stabbing. She’d always hated Donald the most out of the weird spider-crabs she was stuck with. He was a persistent asshole and stabbing him was super cathartic.

There was a significant wobble in the legs, which meant it was time to move or get squashed by an angry, paralyzed spider crab. It had happened before and it had been a truly unpleasant experience, which was saying something these days. Anna skedaddled.

The other two spider crabs were pretty definitively dead. Donald was on fire and screeching in agony. Eskel took the time to go and stab Donald with his sword, which stopped the screeching.

Eskel said a bunch of things. She was bad at Fantasy Slavic, but even she could tell he was pissed off. He eventually stopped and looked at her.

Anna smiled through the gore and repeated the word that had stood out the most. “Kurwa!”

Judging by the groan and how Eskel immediately palmed his face, that was totally a swear word. This new low in language exchange was interrupted by the skittering of more spider crab legs. Clearly, the others had heard the fighting and came to scavenge.

“Eskel!” She made sure he was looking at her and then pointed at the dead crabs, counting them off, one by one. “One, two, three. Three.” Anna held up three fingers.

Eskel nodded slowly, brows drawn with concentration.

Anna pointed out into the hallway, jabbed a finger at the dead crab, and counted again. “One, two, three, four.” She held up four fingers this time.

It was hard to tell in the flickering light, but she was pretty sure the man blanched a bit.

“Kurwa!” Anna nodded.

What followed was very bloody and very loud and required a lot of stabbing, but it was totally worth it to see Karen, Alan, Jeff, and Donna meet a sticky end. She was covered in even more gore and had gotten pinchered a bit, but all her limbs were still attached, so it was all good!

Her new best friend Eskel was very good with a sword and also basic firebending. Also, he could do this weird force-blast thing, which was both useful and very loud.

Anna leaned against the wall. It was comfortingly cool to the touch and also not on fire.

Eskel came over towards her, satisfied now that everything was dead. He had hacked off the right front claw of every spider crab and had tied them in a bundle. It was dripping on the floor.

“You know you can’t eat that, right?” Anna said, waving at the crab claws. She’d tried once. The results were categorically unmentionable and she felt a deep wave of longing for proper indoor plumbing at the mere thought.

Eskel said a bunch of things.

She shrugged. “No idea, dude.”

He paused, thought for a bit, and pointed at himself, then at her. Then made a big gesture.

Anna blinked and rubbed at her neck a bit, ignoring how gross her hair was. There was certainly something happening here, but fuck if she knew what he meant.

Eskel mimed something else. Years in working with small children meant Anna was good at guessing what incomprehensible, non-verbal people wanted. (Usually, it was a snack or some water or more time on the swing set, but none of those options seemed particularly relevant.)

“Come on, I’ll show you the weird ritual room. That’s probably what you’re after.” She made a waving gesture and wandered down the halls, not hesitating once they left the lighted areas.

The room where it all started smelled like decomposing body. Anna waved Eskel in, holding her nose.

Eskel did some firebending and there was light again. Such a useful skill! The room definitely looked like a murder scene, what with the aged blood spatter and dead body.

“Yeah, so this is the room where it happened,” she said, pointing to the weird circle thing. Anna was very much not looking at Goatee Guy, who was bloated and gross and oozy.

Eskel appeared to have a very strong stomach, because he spent a lot of time looking at the corpse and also then looking at her knife and then at her.

“Man, I did’t kill him. I’d like to have! But I didn’t.” She crossed her arms over her chest. Everything was tacky as the spider crab ichor dried slowly. Anna pointed at the corpse and mimed crab claws. “That asshole got stabbed to death by his asshole friend, I had nothing to do with it.”

Eskel took the time to examine what could only be a summoning circle. He muttered lowly to himself and then set it on fire. The color of the fire burned white, then green, then died down again. The circle was completely scorched now.

All righty then.

Anna put her hands on her hips and then remembered the belt. “Oh, hang on!” She dug out the book. It was relatively free of blood and gore. She held it out to Eskel, waving vaguely at Goatee Guy. “Yeah, I looted this off that dude ages ago! You should have it, I can’t read it.”

Eskel very cautiously took the book, leafed through it, and said a few things very emphatically and put it into one of his pockets.

“Skurwissen,” Anna agreed.

Eskel groaned. Anna wasn’t great at a lot of things, but picking up curse words was an important stage in any language learning process. So far, she was two for two!

At this point, Eskel motioned to the door. She followed. He was the most important and interesting thing she’d met since getting here. Anna certainly wasn’t letting him out of her sight.

Plus, maybe he’d get her out of this weird crab dungeon. A girl could dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, a wild Eskel appeared! He is very dubious about this weird, blood-soaked gremlin that he has found in a mage’s secret laboratory.
> 
> Language barriers are fun! (Says the immigrant who makes a living teaching ESL.) This fic is mostly an exploration of my abilities to show up in a place and slowly kludge together a flawed understanding of the local language.
> 
> Also, my Polish is nonexistent. I’m deliberately spelling bits wrong, because Anna is guessing at things phonetically and doesn’t have Google Translate like I do. Since Anna understands nothing, I am replicating that experience for you all. It’s going to be a lot of Lorem Ipsum until she gets a better grasp of the language.


	3. inside an egg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eskel looked up as she approached him. His face went on a whole journey of emotions, too quickly to really identify. Anna had only known him a few hours, but she was pretty sure that was concern on his face.
> 
> “What? Did I miss a spot?” 
> 
> Anna peered into the water, trying to catch a glimpse of her reflection. The scars on her neck stood out prominently now that all the blood and gore had been scrubbed off. She still looked like a murder victim. Just, you know, cleaner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anna does not die once in this chapter! Good for you, Anna.

The world was still here.

Anna stumbled after Eskel and the hole he’d blown in a solid wood door, blinking in the bright light of day.

The world was still here. There were trees and bird calls and a light wind and the world was still here. She wasn’t in a hell dimension full of chittering monsters and hunger and thirst.

Eskel stopped as soon as she fell to her knees, grabbing at the dirt and pulling at clumps of grass. It all felt so goddamn real. The world was still here.

If this was a hallucination, she never wanted to wake up.

Eskel, bless his heart, let her have a moment or two before gently shepherding her up. She kept blinking at him, eyes unable to focus properly in the direct sunlight, tripping over her own feet. The man softly kept up a running commentary, even though Anna still couldn’t follow any of the words.

Anna was not going to lose it at the sight of the world, existing. She wasn’t. She was a grown-ass woman who was having a really weird time in her life and she was going to remain level-headed about her dramatic rescue from Kevin and Donald and Bob and all the other fucking monsters that had hounded her in that timeless, endless pitch black nightmare.

Eskel led her though the trees into what was some sort of camp, complete with a fire pit, pack of supplies, and a bedroll. There was a large black horse tied to a tree. It was eating grass and made a noise as they came closer.

Anna was not really into horses, but it was an objectively pretty horse.

Eskel sat her down near the fire pit and started fiddling with the coals. She looked at him. He looked more tired in the daylight, covered in more gore. Anna sympathized.

She looked down at her hands. There was viscera everywhere, including a weird ichor residue which had probably come from the spider-crabs. Anna picked at it and tried not to think about the last time she had a shower because why make herself sadder than she had to be, right?

Eskel was digging around in his packs now. He pulled out some kind of hardtack and handed it to her.

She burst into tears and threw herself at Eskel’s knees.

The poor man managed to catch her before she collided with any important limbs. Eskel was stiffly holding her, holding her at arms length.

This was the worst hug she’d had in decades.

“This is the worst hug I’ve had in decades,” she told him, in between gulping, heaving sobs. “You’re really bad at this.”

Eskel didn’t seem to get that all she wanted and needed was comfort. She couldn’t read his expression easily; her eyes were blurry and unfocused before all the crying had started, anyways.

Anna reached over, grabbing in the general direction of the arm that wasn’t holding her upright. After a minute or so, Eskel correctly interpreted her grabby hands and held her hand. She tangled their fingers together, squeezing tightly, and then curled herself around the arm. Eskel had gloves on, thick and faintly iridescent in a way she had never seen leather look before. Anna had no idea how big this body was, but she felt *small* and *helpless* and she wanted an actual hug, goddamnit.

Finally, Eskel got with the program. This hug would not win any awards, but at least Eskel managed to make vaguely soothing noises and pat her awkwardly on the head while she sobbed into his weird, striped leather armor.

Finishing a cry in front of someone else was always awkward. It was worse when she couldn’t make a self-deprecating joke to make things a bit lighter.

Eskel patted her back some more. He’d sort of gotten the hang of it by now.

“Thanks, Eskel,” she said and sniffled a little and fell asleep feeling safe and warm.

***

Things were definitely on the upswing when she finally woke up. For one thing, she was out of that horror dungeon of crab monsters. (As much as evolution thought crabs were neat, she very much never wanted to see one again unless it was steamed and served with a garlic butter sauce.) Also, Eskel had made a fire and procured fresh meat somehow - probably rabbit? - and was poking at a pot hung over the fire.

It was some point in late afternoon. Reflexively, she felt around for her phone to check the time. Obviously, bupkis. It was dumb reflex, but Anna still did it. She’d always been bad at guesstimating the time and that was before she’d spent months locked in a near-lightless hellhole. The daylight still hurt, but not as much as before.

Anna sat up. Eskel had put a blanket over her while she slept. It smelled like horse. The blanket certainly smelled better than she did.

“Hi Eskel,” she said quietly.

Eskel looked up. He’d wiped off a lot of the gore while she was asleep. Those certainly were some face scars. She politely ignored them and focused on his eyes, which were a shocking amber-gold. There was something wrong with the pupils as well, but she wasn’t close enough to tell for certain.

“Anya.” He tried for a smile. It looked unpracticed, but kind. He spoke for a little while, then held up a water skin. “ _Woda_?”

She blinked. “ _Woda_? Water!” It might have been a false cognate, but oh god, he sounded like a Long Islander. Anna took the water skin and drained it dry in huge, heaving gulps. She felt better. “Water! _Woda_!”

“ _Woda_.” Eskel nodded and took the water skin back. His hands were huge and just as scarred as his face.

There was a pleasant breeze winding through the clearing. Anna shifted the blanked over her crossed legs and scratched at her nose in the silence.

“So, I guess it’s time to see if we can really communicate. Obviously, you don’t speak English. _Habla_ _espanol_? _Sprechen_ _sie_ _Deutsch_? Ah, _parley-vouz francais_? _Hui shuo putonghua ma_? _Nihongo_ _hanamaska_?” Anna stared at Eskel carefully, trying to see if anything sparked recognition. She liked to dabble in languages. She wasn’t fluent in any of these languages by any means, but maybe they had a second language in common?

Nothing.

Eskel politely waited for her to finish.

Fuck a duck. Billions of people spoke those languages, as a second or third language if nothing else. And Eskel kept looking at her as if she was speaking Klingon.

“America? McDonald’s? Disney?” Nothing.

Anna threw out her last life-line. “Coca-Cola?” She mimed opening a can of soda and drinking it.

Eskel dug in his bags and procured her another water skin.

Oh fuck. Capitalism was awful, but Anna was certain there were barely contacted indigenous tribes living in the middle of nowhere who had access to Coca-Cola. She’d once been offered a coke while sitting in a yurt in Outer Mongolia, a six-day ride on horseback to the nearest village. If Eskel had never heard of coke...

She took the water skin and drank and curled up into a ball.

This was really not good.

Eskel noticed her dropping mood. He moved over to the fire and ladled something out of the pot into a small tin bowl. The spoon was also made of metal.

“ _Massh_ _trohey_ _ofshankey_ ,” Eskel said, slowly and clearly, handing over the bowl. He pointed at the food in the bowl and said it again clearly. _“Ofshanka.”_

Anna took it. The bowl was full of some kind of oatmeal or porridge. It was warm and smelled like real food and she could feel tears gathering. “ _Of-shan-ka_. Thanks, Eskel. Thanks.”

It was unsweetened and the consistency was weird. It was so goddamn good. It was hard to slow down; Anna didn’t want to stress her poor stomach and accidentally vomit up the first real meal she’d had in god knows how long, but _food._ She took a small sip of water and licked her gross, cracked lips.

Eskel hadn’t ladled himself a bowl. Instead, he settled himself into a crouch and watched her eat.

“Aren’t you hungry, Eskel?” Sure, he couldn’t respond intelligibly, but having another person to talk to was a novel experience. “Your porridge is good. _Ofshanka_ , yum!” She gave an enthusiastic smile and rubbed her belly happily.

The pantomiming didn’t do much to crack the stern look. Oh well. Anna applied herself diligently to the porridge. Eskel had given her a generous portion and she made it about halfway before her stomach gave an unwelcome lurch.

“Oh, I should probably stop eating. I don’t want to barf,” she said, putting the bowl down on the bed roll and rubbing her stomach ruefully.

The silence dragged on. Anna was a patient person, but at some point Eskel was going to have to talk.

She picked at her skin, trying to dislodge dried-on flecks of dirt and blood. Hang on.

 _“Woda,_ Eskel?” He’d had to have filled the water skins somewhere. Anna mimed pouring water on her arms and scrubbing her skin. Oh god, she might be able to rinse off. “ _Woda_?”

***

Eskel led her to a charming mountain stream. They were high up, so it was narrow and fast and cold, but it was fresh water that she hadn’t collected from condensation droplets. It looked glorious.

Anna walked right into the river and sat down without even bothering to take her gross shift off. The rocks were shiny and kind of sharp, but it was running water. She immediately started rubbing at her hands and skin, trying to scrape off the layers of blood and gore and sweat and ichor and everything else.

Dunking her head under the current was almost a religious experience. She nearly choked, trying to drink as much of the stream as she could. Anna could almost feel her body rehydrating and it felt glorious.

Eskel said something. She looked up. He held up a bar of soap.

“Eskel, you are my favoritest person in the entire goddamn world,” she told him earnestly and started scrubbing with joy. The soap was barely processed past lye and it stung. Anna did not care.

Clouds of dirt swirled downstream with every rinse. She had never been so happy to take an ice cold bath. She kept drinking water until her stomach sloshed with every movement and then she drank a bit more.

Eskel sat nearby on the bank. His attention was mostly on some kind of mending project in his lap, but every minute or so he looked up to check in on her.

Tackling her hair was less of a project than expected. One of the few things she had done in the lair of horrors was taking the time to finger comb her hair over and over and over again in the absence of anything better to do. Handfuls of loose strands were pulled free after a lather and a rinse and she winced. Poor nutrition thinned hair and she hadn’t had a square meal in ages. It would grow back, maybe.

It was too cold to properly soak. She drank more water and rinsed again and scrubbed everything with the sharp, astringent soap.

Eventually, she ran out of other things to scrub. Anna peeled off the shift and did her best not to grimace. She didn’t like looking too closely at her body. There were a lot of scars and she could count her ribs with ease. Rubbing soap across her skin just meant she was even more aware of every last line of hyperactive scar tissue, red and angry lines crossing her neck and chest and arms and legs and back.

Anna scrubbed and scrubbed and rinsed until she was blue in the toes and as clean as she was going to get.

The stains on her shift were not going to come out without serious chemical intervention, but at least it no longer smelled like death. Putting it back on was awful. She was wet and cold, the shift was wet and cold, and the fading daylight did little to change either of those things. Ah, well, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Eskel looked up as she approached him. His face went on a whole journey of emotions, too quickly to really identify. Anna had only known him a few hours, but she was pretty sure that was concern on his face.

“What? Did I miss a spot?”

Anna peered into the water, trying to catch a glimpse of her reflection. The scars on her neck stood out prominently now that all the blood and gore had been scrubbed off. She still looked like a murder victim. Just, you know, cleaner.

How rude. She definitely looked a lot better now that all the gore was off. Sure, it highlighted her cadaverous skin and scars and made her look like a poor waif from a charity appeal, but she was clean.

Anna shrugged and handed back the soap. “Thanks, Eskel.”

***

It turned out that Eskel’s mending project was actually a quick tailoring operation to turn a white undershirt into something she could actually wear. Bless that man and his family unto seven generations.

Anna giggled with glee as she peeled herself out of the wretched shift in front of the fire and stomped on it for good measure. Nakedness meant nothing if she was getting some new clothes out of it.

Eskel handed over the white undershirt without hesitation. For a guy with such visible scarring, he was doing a piss-poor job hiding his own gawking at Anna’s scar tissue. Anna was too busy making with the grabby hands to even care.

It was an interesting sewing job. After all, Eskel was a big dude. She was a lot closer to the ground these days to estimate properly, but he probably topped out over six foot. At least. His arms were nearly as long as she was and he was built like the proverbial brick house. She should have been swimming in fabric. This problem was solved with the application of a cord to draw the waist in and a button to hold the collar together. The shirtsleeves themselves had been cut down and turned into a separate pair of pants, again held together with cord. It was a rough and ready job, but the stitches were neat and even.

Anna wriggled in place, unable to control her happiness.

Form defined function: she was basically a small child. Emotions were bigger and harder to deal with as a child. Right now, Anna was feeling very, very excited at the clean clothes and the fact that she had at least one layer of fabric in between her nethers and the ground.

She ran her hands up and down the shift. It was some kind of linen-blend, a tight weave and functionally undyed. It said a lot about this place’s clothing manufacturing processes. Anna ignored that too in favor of spinning in a circle and then jumping to hug Eskel’s knees again.

This time, he let her collide with him. Perhaps it was because she’d left the knife on the bedroll earlier. Maybe he was just getting used to her exuberance. In either case, she squeezed tighter and sniffled into his thigh.

“Thanks, Eskel.”

The leather pants were even weirder closer up. The analytical part of her brain was taking notes about the lacing and the cut of the fabric and making some pretty compelling arguments about medieval dress wear.

Anna was getting pretty good at ignoring that part of her brain.

Eskel very gently patted her newly cleaned hair. It needed combing.

She pointed at her hair and then mimed finger-combing it. “Do you have a brush or something, Eskel? If I don’t do anything about my hair before it dries completely, I’m going to have a rat’s nest in the morning.”

This bit of pantomime was successful; Eskel went to his packs and dug out a fine-toothed comb that looked like it was hand carved from a very pale wood or perhaps bone.

Anna flopped to the ground, sitting with her legs criss-crossed on the bedroll. The knots in her hair were pretty impressive; finger-combing only did so much. At a certain point, the comb got stuck and she had to give up for fear of breaking it. It had happened before with plastic combs at home; she didn’t want to ruin Eskel’s things.

Eskel had been keeping a weather eye on the proceedings and startled when she teared up.

Stupid childish emotional control. Anna hadn’t cried over her hair in years.

“Bodies are stupid and so is hair,” Anna sniffled and then pointed at where the comb was all tangled up. “Eskel, can you help? Please?”

The man was light on his feet and he settled on the bedroll next to her silently. “Anya, _potcha_ _bruya_ _pomsey_?”

Anna pointed at her hair and then at Eskel. “Hair, Eskel. Please help.”

Eskel repeated himself, slower this time. _“Potcha bruyej pomoce_?”

“ _Potcha_ _bruyei_ _pomoche_ ,” she parroted back, nodding a bit.

Eskel took the comb back. His hands were gentle, tugging at the knots slowly and carefully. Her hair tended to knot dreadfully without any oil or product. The poor man was in for a serious amount of work.

The soft repetition was soothing. She could hear the wind in the trees, the crackle of the fire, the distant sounds of the horse munching on something. It was so restful.

Between the sheer emotional toll and physical exhaustion of the day, Anna could feel herself drifting off. The last thing she was aware of was a large hand softly laying her down on the bedroll and the blanket being tugged over her.

***

The next day was bright and sunny. She woke up in dire need of the facilities.

Anna sat up, looked around, and burst into tears.

Eskel startled. He was by the fire again, poking at something in the cook pot.

She sniffled and rubbed at her eyes. “Oh, don’t mind me, Eskel. I’m just so happy that I’m not in that stupid place with all those asshole crabs.” Anna stood, cracked her back, and wandered over to the tall man.

He watched her carefully, but she’d left the knife on the bedroll again.

She slowly leaned into his space, aiming for the unscarred side. The man didn’t react much, so she flopped against him. Her arms couldn’t even begin to get around his barrel chest. It was _so nice_ to touch another person.

Eskel patted her twice on the head, cautious and awkward. She sighed happily in response.

“You making breakfast, Eskel? _Ofshanka_?” Anna motioned towards the pot.

She could feel the man nod, tectonic shifts of muscle moving. “ _Dag_.”

Anna tried to fix that word in her mind, nodding decisively herself. “ _Dag_?”

“ _Tahg_.”

Their little language lesson subsided into silence. Anna could feel herself relaxing even more, almost back into a nice little nap, but needs must. She sighed and picked herself up.

This close to Eskel, she could finally see the deformed pupils. His gold eyes were truly extraordinary up close. Whatever genetic anomaly he had, it didn’t seem to hinder his vision at all, even if she had no idea how he managed to have depth perception with slitted pupils.

Anna put that aside and pointed first at her crotch and then at the woods. “Excuse me for a minute, but I’ve got to go see a man about a horse.”

He blinked and let her go without a remark.

The forest was weird. It reminded her of California, maybe, or Utah. Hot, dry air, mountains, pines. Tall grass gone yellow with a lack of rain. Anna did her best to dig a small divot into the ground with the heel of her foot and then stare off into the middle distance. Gods, she really missed indoor plumbing.

The river was burbling cheerfully and was colder than a witch’s tit this early in the morning. Who needed caffeine when you could have an ice bath to start your day?

She drank her fill of the river water. It was clear and crisp and likely laced with giardia. Anna didn’t care, too busy mindlessly gulping down water until she sloshed.

Eskel had a bowl of porridge waiting for her when she eventually returned. Anna dug in with gusto. The ofshanka was just as good the second time around. Eskel had even put some apple slices in, cooked down until they were sweet and soft.

Anna ate as if this was her second decent meal in months. Starving wolves might’ve been more polite. She only slowed down on the last bite and not a spoonful before.

“This is excellent, Eskel! Thank you for breakfast, I really do appreciate it!”

The man accepted her chatter with a nod and a series of low words that meant absolutely nothing to her. He looked pleased she had eaten everything, gesturing towards the cookpot in a way she hoped meant ‘there are seconds if you want it’. She did. Anna needed so much more food.

Eskel spooned another portion into the bowl. Anna made it disappear and tried to look less like a bottomless black pit. Eskel smiled again and scraped a third portion into the bowl, cleaning out the cook pot. From what she could tell, he hadn’t eaten a single serving. He handed it to her.

Anna tried to hand it back. “Eskel, you need to eat. It’s fine.” The man looked at her with his weird golden eyes and gently folded his gloved hands over hers.

“ _Yedsh_ , Anya,” Eskel said.

_“Yedsh?”_

Eskel nodded. “ _Tak_ , _yedsh_.”

Permission granted, Anna did just that. Eskel went about packing the campsite up. It wasn’t much; just tidying things into saddlebags and sorting out the fire. Anna felt kind of useless. Clearly, Eskel wanted her to sit and eat, though.

Surprisingly, Eskel handed Anna her knife hilt-first before rolling up the bedroll. It looked pretty wrecked in the daylight, rusted and discolored from lack of care. There were nicks in the blade, too. Anna wasn’t sure how a person went about fixing a knife - a blacksmith? - but it was very kind of Eskel to give it back to her, given the circumstances.

Also, she looked like she was five. Competent adults did not let small children carry sharp objects. It was like part of the top ten rules of childcare. Anna suddenly felt conflicted about being handed a rusty knife, even if she carefully clutched it to her chest like a stabby comfort object.

The campsite was swept clear of anything. Even her breakfast bowl had been tidied away and put into a saddlebag. Eskel smothered the fire with dirt, sending up a puff of white smoke.

Anna stood around, knife in hand, and felt kind of lost.

Eskel knelt and looked at her in the eye. He was really a massive dude, even bent in half.

“Eskel, are we going somewhere?” Anna pointed the two of them and then at a random direction. She made her fingers walk over the other hand, hopefully that would get the point across.

His face lit up and he nodded. “ _Tak_ , Anya.” He paused, the pointed at himself and made the walking gesture. Eskel pointed at Anna and then at the horse.

“Whoa, there, you’re not seriously thinking of putting me on that thing,” Anna said. “That horse is taller than you, it’s really too much horse for me. I can walk too!” Anna jerked a thumb at herself and then made the walking gesture with a certain emphasis.

Eskel shook his head and said a lot of words, none of which made any sense. But he seemed pretty resolute about having her on the horse’s back.

Anna sighed and nodded. “Fine. _Tak,_ Eskel, I will ride the horse and when I fall off and break my neck I am going to blame you.”

Argument over, Eskel picked her up and put her on the horse. It was very, very tall. She looked over at Eskel, who was now shorter than her. The horse’s ears flicked back at her.

Anna gently leaned forward and delicately pet at the horse. “Uh, good horsie. Nice horsie!”

Eskel clicked his tongue and the horse started moving forward and Anna clutched at the saddle horn desperately.

Unfortunately for her, Anna did not possess any latent horsemanship skills. The saddle was broad, designed for someone of Eskel’s height. As expected, her stubby little legs barely hung over the sides, not even close to where the feet usually went. Her hips and thighs started aching immediately, as did her lower back. Anna gritted her teeth and did her best to ignore it.

The world around the horse continued to look like west coast wilderness. Gods, she hoped there weren’t bears or mountain lions. They weren’t following any kind of road or even path. Anna had no idea how Eskel was navigating, but he kept making confident adjustments in their heading.

The sun was shining, wind was blowing through the trees, and Anna could hear the cheerful chirping of birds. She was clean, fed, and watered. All of the crabs had been murderated with extreme prejudice. Some had even been set on fire! Anna was going to call today the best day she’d had in a very long time.

Sure, she’d been rescued by a guy with weird eyes and a horrific facial scar who spoke some random language that sounded kind of familiar but was still completely foreign to her and he had never even heard of America, but hey. Still doing better than before!

They kept moving for several hours. At lunch, Eskel generously helped her down for a visit-the-woods break and more food and water. Anna ate the hard tack and drained a water skin without even blinking. It was like a compulsion, almost. She was unbelievably thirsty, still.

Eskel put her on the horse and they continued on.

Eventually, they came to their destination.

Not long after their lunch stop, Eskel had cut through the brush and found a genuine dirt path through the forest. Anna had been on nicer trails in national parks, but it was a sign of civilization!

It was not a sign of civilization.

Anna had been deliberately Not Thinking about her circumstances. Unfortunately, the village was a rude awakening. Anna had driven through forgotten little settlements before, tiny gatherings of buildings and a gas station that had barely managed to hold on in the face of modernization and the lure of the big city. This was like that, except all the roofs were made of thatch and the entire construction looked to be mud-and-wattle. Not the sturdy kind. There were maybe twenty structures, none with a second story. It was depressing as fuck.

The villagers looked equally friendly. There were sneers and one woman pushed a child behind herself with no subtlety. Everyone was wearing their best peasant chic. She couldn’t see a single bit of plastic, anywhere. There was a goat wandering freely along the packed dirt road and a flock of thin, hungry looking chickens pecking for grubs.

Anna forced down a wave of nausea and kept looking at the town, trying to see something familiar.

People didn’t live like this, not really, not in the 21st century. Even remote villages had things like a single satellite dish or a gas powered engine or a solar panel with every Nokia phone in the community hooked up for a recharge. The Amish used contemporary, machine-woven fabrics to sew their clothes. Back-to-the-landers and hippies used modern designs for house building and had things like glass or aluminum or PVC pipes. Heck, nomadic Mongolian herders had motorbikes and drones to help with their work.

This... no one, not even the history nuts, took historical authenticity to this point.

Not to the point of filth and grime and desperate, grinding poverty.

While Anna was busy having her slow-moving eureka moment, Eskel had moseyed to a stop in front of the biggest hovel, calming the horse with a gentle hand. There was a big dog laying at the doorstep and it growled lowly as they stopped. An older woman, straight spine and a sour look on her face, moved to meet him.

Anna was just going off body language, but the conversation looked tense. The woman clearly didn’t like Eskel, was all but spitting in his face. Eskel, for his part, seemed to be keeping calm.

Eskel came over to the back and pulled off a stinking woven hemp bag. There were ominous stains. Out came the random limbs that he’d cut off from all the crab bastards.

The woman nodded and spat deliberately on the dusty road. She went into the hut and returned with a small bag that clinked when it was lobbed into Eskel’s hand.

Anna watched this interaction with wide eyes. Was Eskel a monster hunter of some kind? Had he been paid to clean out the nest of evil crabs?

It was at this point when the conversation clearly turned to her. Anna could tell because Eskel pointed to her and said her name and then a whole bunch of other words she couldn’t understand. The man gently picked her up off the horse and set her on the ground.

Anna’s legs wobbled with pins and needles. She leaned against Eskel for support. He patted her gently on the head and gave her a soft push forward.

The woman shook her head, unmoved.

Eskel waved at Anna and said something calmly, insistently.

The woman took a few begrudging steps forward to meet Anna in the middle of the dirt road. This close, Anna could smell her, see the deep lines of stress and hunger carved into her face. Anna liked to joke and say she came from peasant stock, descended from a long line of serfs and dirt farmers and that’s why her body was the way it was. She had been very wrong. This was what peasants looked like: hardscrabble and lean and worn to the bone.

A few feet away, the woman stopped and bent to take a closer look at Anna.

“Uh, hi?” Anna waved, feeling very awkward. She looked up at the woman, squinting a little because of the bright sun. Her eyes had sort of adjusted to daylight again, but it was still painful. At least this time, she wasn’t meeting a new person while covered in monster viscera.

The headwoman met Anna’s eyes, which is how Anna could see the dawning revulsion and horror on her face when the other woman saw the state of her. It was pretty blatant. The village headwoman made a gesture with her hands, sharp and cutting.

That didn’t bode well.

The headwoman straightened up like she’d been shocked and moved away from Anna in a hurry. Which, rude. Anna’d had a bath yesterday and again today in the river, she was very clean.

Anna looked over her shoulder at Eskel, hoping for a friendly face. She’d only known Eskel for a day, so Anna wasn’t super certain about the look on his face as he said more things. It wasn’t a happy look.

The other villagers gathered nearby muttered and whispered, but no one really responded to whatever he was saying.

The headwoman frowned. Crossed her arms over her chest. Shook her head no.

The other villagers mutter louder. The vibe was getting a little too “torches and pitchforks” for Anna’s comfort.

Eskel said something. Whatever argument he was making was falling on deaf ears.

Anna had a really bad feeling about this. She scooted backwards until she bumped into the the comforting solidity of Eskel. He laid a heavy, gloved hand on her shoulder and she snuggled back into it.

The headwoman said something, her tone final. The scowl said everything.

Eskel swung Anna back up on the horse. Her leg muscles ached, but she’d rather cramps than stay in this rapidly unfriendly village a second longer than she needed to be.

“Eskel?” She asked quietly. “Eskel, I don’t like this. Can we go?”

He hummed back soothingly and patted her leg with the hand that wasn’t holding the horse’s reins. Eskel’s face was calm, but she could see the tension in his frame at this close distance.

The horse stamped its feet a few times and then moved forward at Eskel’s prompting.

Eskel didn’t look back as he led them out of town.

“Kurwa,” Anna said feelingly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was brought to you by quarantine and support from commenters like you! QUARANTINE: Maybe we should have made the first graders wear masks in school after all.
> 
> Other notes:  
> \- Nature may abhor a vacuum, but it [sure loves crabs.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation)  
> \- [Don’t drink untreated water,](https://www.outsideonline.com/2279401/actually-slate-you-really-should-filter-your-water) kids.  
> \- Amish communities do not grow/process their own cotton fabrics. Instead, women of their community go to wholesalers and purchase last-year’s fabrics in bulk rates, assuming they aren’t hot pink or Disney branded or whatever.  
> \- The headwoman does a downwards-facing horns sign with her hand, which was historically used to ward off the evil eye in Europe before metal heads adopted it for music reasons.
> 
> Polish is in italics. Again, I don’t speak Polish, so this is google-translated and intentionally messed up. We’re trying to recreate how awful learning a language after being dropped into a new world would be! No shortcuts or magical language acquisition here!


End file.
